


you're the cream in my coffee

by virotutis



Category: Kagerou Project
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, M/M, dumb, really badly written im sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 12:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1185971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virotutis/pseuds/virotutis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Welcome to the Blindfolded Café,” he says, voice as polite as he can make it, which really isn’t all that polite. To be honest, it sounds more sarcastic and mocking than he intended. This is Ayano’s the one that’s good with people, not him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're the cream in my coffee

**Author's Note:**

> HAPYP V-DAY POSTEDE AT 11:38 PM SHUT UP ITS STILL V-DAY CROSSPOSTED @ SHINTATO ON TUMBLR

It’s only one fifty in the afternoon, and Shintaro is already practically falling asleep at his position at the front counter. He hasn’t had a good night’s sleep for days, due to the stupid, dumb, terrible horror movie that Momo made him watch with her last week, and the soft, soothing piano arrangement they keep playing in the background at the café is lulling him to sleep, especially when there’s no one in the back to make any noises, since Ayano and her siblings are out for a family outing today.

When the glass door suddenly opens, almost flying off the hinge and loudly ringing the metal bell that Ayano attached to the top, the sounds startle him awake and he barely managed to keep in a loud scream. Gross, he thinks, customers. How great, just completely perfect. He hastily slaps himself in the face a few times to try and get rid of his drowsiness.

A girl with her hair tied up in pigtails comes walking through the door like she owns the place, wearing a pair of headphones around her neck and an expression like someone pissed in her cereal this morning, and Shintaro immediately feels a sense of dislike for her. There’s only room for one person with a not-so-sunny disposition in this cafe, and it’s sure not her. He’s the one that been standing here since eight in the morning completely alone and dealing with shitheads that call themselves customers.

The sense of dislike gets even worse when he sees someone following behind her, a ridiculously tall boy with a green sweater and a cheerful smile on his face, and he thinks, oh even better, they’re dating. Boy pissed off girl or something and he’s too oblivious and dumb to understand what he did wrong.

He hates couples, hates them with a burning passion. He hates their blatant displays of PDAs, hates their dumb loving gazes at each other, and despises their lovey-dovey bullshit. He hates it so much he could punch himself in the face and throw up.

He pauses and shakes his head. He really needed more sleep, or get laid, whichever happens first to him. Mostly likely the sleep though, because he is a twenty two year old virgin that will never get laid who only dated one person before he realized that wow, uh, he didn’t like Ayano in that way and Ayano was only going along with it because she was too nice to actually turn him down.

He didn’t even kiss her once, because just the thought of it made him feel sick to his stomach, just like how the thought of doing anything remotely romantic with Momo made him feel sick or how the thought of just doing anything with a girl made him feel uncomfortable. He’s just glad that her crazy overprotective dad didn’t try to lynch after they broke up, even if it was only because Ayano kept insisting to him that “Shintaro’s gay, Dad! He’s not interested in me, okay? We only dated to confirm that! Dad, put down the knife!”

Just the memory of Kenjirou standing over him with the knife makes him shiver. God, that man was crazy. He shakes his head and tries to get rid of those thoughts. Now’s not the time to revisit those thoughts, not when there’s an angry girl standing in front of him, scowling at him with her hands on her hips. Good god, girl needs to chill. Her boyfriend might have pissed her off, but Shintaro’s an innocent bystander here, ma’am.

“Welcome to the Blindfolded Café,” he says, voice as polite as he can make it, which really isn’t all that polite. To be honest, it sounds more sarcastic and mocking than he intended. This is Ayano’s the one that’s good with people, not him. He’s just the antisocial best friend suckered into helping her out occasionally at her family’s cafe when she needs an extra hand because for the life of him, he’s physically incapable of denying Ayano anything, when she pulls out the puppy-dog eyes.

The girl looks even more pissed now, like Shintaro personally offended her and kicked her dog, and she looks like she’s about to say something, probably going to try to cuss him out, like the other patrons do whenever he pisses them off, but then she looks at her boyfriend, still smiling like an idiot, then completely shuts her mouth.

Great, the girl’s trying to save face in front of her boyfriend. Man, Shintaro’s so tempted to fuck with her and piss her off and completely ruin her relationship with her tree of a boyfriend that it should be illegal. Sadly, Shintaro might be a dick, but he’s not as terrible as to do something like that. Plus, he hasn’t gotten nearly enough sleep to be as clever and creative as he usually is, so chances are he’ll just end up embarrassing himself instead.

He clears his throat instead, raising an eyebrow at the girl who immediately turns to scowl at him. Wow, angry much? Shintaro hasn’t even done anything besides welcome her to the dumb café albeit a little less politely than he should have. “So? What can I get you two? Make it quick, I don’t exactly have all day.”

“You’re such a fucking asshole,” the girl mutters underneath her breath, glaring at him. She grabs her boyfriend by the arm and tries to tug him away. “Come on, Haruka, let’s go to somewhere with better service, where the people making the coffee won’t spit in it.”

While Shintaro is perfectly fine with them leaving, just the thought that someone would think he was low enough to spit in something someone will consume makes him feel a little hurt. That’s gross, completely disgusting. That’s something he might expect from Kano or something as a dumb prank because Kano is a gross and completely disgusting individual.

“But Takane,” the boyfriend whines, frowning slightly and glancing at Shintaro. “We’re already in here! It’s rude to just leave like that! Plus, you already woke him up when you walked inside and opened the door…”

The girl- Takane, she was called- blushes bright red. “T-that’s because you were complaining about it being cold outside, Haruka! You were the one that wanted to go in, but you didn’t want to wake him, so I had to do it for you!”

How disgustingly sweet of her, Shintaro thinks, and he yawns loudly to catch their attention, cutting their conversation off. Takane glares at him even more now. Perfect. “Are you going to order, or are you going to leave? Hurry up and pick already. At this rate, if you keep wasting my time like this, I really am going to spit in your coffee.”

They looks at each other for a moment, having a nonverbal conversation that Shintaro can just tell is full of ‘please, pretty please!’ from Haruka, just by the pleading expression and large pout on his face, and eventually, Takane lets out a loud huff, turning her head to the side and nodding.

What a pity, they’re staying after all. Shintaro grunts, and wipes his hands on his dumb apron. “Just hurry it up so I can make your stupid coffee so you two can leave already.”

Takane glares at him before slamming her palm down onto the counter and staring him straight in the eye. “I want a large coffee, as black as your stupid hair and as bitter as your shitty personality,” she says, in a completely serious tone. “I want something that will keep me up for three days straight.”

Shintaro suddenly feels some respect for this girl, a hell of a lot braver and with a lot more dead taste buds than he has, and he only nods, not making any smartass comments, which makes her squint at him suspiciously. “The special Tateyama mix for you then, I suppose. It’s not my problem if this stuff kills your taste buds, so don’t complain to me or anything. Got that? And? What about him?”

“Ah, uh, I’ll take a hot chocolate, please!” Haruka says, giving him a bright, cheerful smile that makes Shintaro blink. He’s, he’s still not exactly used to Ayano smiling at him like that even know they’ve known each other for so long, so a total stranger doing it makes his heart skip a beat or two. Gross.

He abruptly turns around, feeling his cheeks start to redden, and he’s about to go into the kitchen to get Kenjirou’s special batch of coffee beans to make for her, but he has to stop. God, fuck. They’re in one of the higher cabinets, so high that only Kenjirou and Seto can reach it because Kano and caffeine is not a good combination and they took away the stepladder because Kano found it and tried to use it to get the beans.

He slowly turns back around, taking deep breathes to try and calm himself and cool his face, muttering insults to Kano to distract himself and he tries to think up of a good apology without sounding too apologetic, and then. He squints at the tree of a boyfriend the girl has, who blinks at him curiously and smiles. Huh. Well. Problem solved then.

“Hey, green sweater guy-Haruka, right?” Shintaro says, looking him up and down, and ignoring the look that Takane gives him for that. Don’t worry, girl. The guy might be kind of cute and might have a really nice smile, but Shintaro isn’t interested in taken goods. “Just how tall are you?”

“Y-you’re right! My name is Haruka!” the guy replies excitedly, smiling widely and clenching his hands into fists. “How did you know? That’s so cool!”

Shintaro just gives him a blank stare. “Magic,” he replies dryly, and ignores the way Haruka’s eyes sparkle at his answer. Apparently the guy doesn’t understand sarcasm. “How tall are you?”

“Oh! I think I’m six feet? That’s what the nurse said a few days ago, when I went in for my checkup,” Haruka hums thoughtfully, crossing his arms over his chest in thought. “Why?”

Tree guy really is a tree. Six feet, huh… Shintaro squints at him even more. The guy’s taller than Seto and Kenjirou by two inches and taller by himself by four inches. He should be able to get the sack no problem. “Great. That’s perfect, come here, I need your help for something.”

“Okay!” Haruka says, nodding and about to walk around the counter, but Takane grabs him by the elbow, sputtering, “H-Haruka! Are you really going to just follow him like that?! He’s too shady! Who knows what he wants to do to you!”

Shintaro snorts abruptly, rolling his eyes at her. “Jesus Christ, it’s not like I’m going to eat him or anything. I just need to borrow your dumb, green sweater wearing tree of a boyfriend to-”

Takane lets out a startled, shrill screech at that, loud enough to make even Shintaro, with his years of accidentally opening video with sudden earphone breaking levels of loudness, flinch. “He, he isn’t my boyfriend!” she stammers, cheeks flushing bright red, and she immediately lets go of Haruka’s elbow to shove him away. She does, however, give Haruka a hopeful look.

Haruka stumbles to the side, and he has to grab onto the counter to balance himself. He doesn’t seem affected by the shove or the scream, and just nods and smiles. “Yeah, Takane and I aren’t dating!”

“Your not-boyfriend then,” Shintaro corrects, rolling his eyes. “Friend, companion, hopeless seven year crush, whatever he is to you, I really don’t care. I just need him to get me the coffee beans off the top shelf, because we had to get rid of the stepladder because of a certain incident with the dumbest kid ever who thinks that he can actually drink coffee, when just soda is enough to get him hyper.”

Takane squints at him, scowling suspiciously at him. “Why do you keep the beans on the top shelf where you can’t get it when you work at a coffee shop? That makes no fucking sense. Then again, you’re a fucking dumb piece of shit, so it’s obvious that you aren’t capable of logical thought like the rest of us.”

Shintaro only shrugs at her, not bothering to retort to her insults. Haruka seems to be doing it for him anyway, frowning at her and tugging at her sleeve, looking slightly disappointed and upset. “Like I said, the dumbest kid ever works here. If we kept it somewhere he could reach them, then he’d just eat them. He’s done it before.”

Haruka turns to look at him, blinking in confusion. “You can eat coffee beans? Are, are they good?” He sounds like he’s actually considering eating some. Takane nudges him in the side, squinting and muttering something that Shintaro can’t quite catch, and he pouts.

Whatever, it’s none of Shintaro’s business what they talk about. “I guess? But I really wouldn’t recommend eating them,” he says, flinching at the memory of Kido and Ayano yelling and lecturing Kano for hours after he fell off the stepladder and broke his arm, telling him about how stupid he is, breaking his arm for coffee beans, and how coffee beans cause heartburn and they work as laxatives in large amounts. Those two are scary when they get serious.

“It’s a lot stronger than just coffee, since the drink waters the effect down, so a few beans can get you pretty jittery. Plus, they can cause some pretty bad heartburn and stuff if you eat too many of them,” Shintaro explains, frowning slightly and trying to remember parts of Ayano’s long explanation of why no, Shuuya, you cannot eat the coffee beans anymore. “It tends to increase stomach acid and stuff.”

“Ooh! I see,” Haruka nods, frowning thoughtfully. “I thought that it would have been okay if I had some of the chocolate covered coffee beans that you’re selling, since the doctor said that I can’t drink any coffee, but if it’s bad for me, then I can’t have it…”

The guy looks like a kicked puppy, pouting and letting out a small, disappointed sigh, and it makes Shintaro feel a bad. He clears his throat. “We have some oatmeal raisin cookies in the back, if you want some,” he offers, a little hesitantly, and he shoves his hands into pockets to seem nonchalant.

Haruka looks overjoyed by the offer, but Takane frowns at him. “Just because it has oatmeal and some raisins in it doesn’t exactly make it healthy. It has too much sugar and fats in it to be good, plus there isn’t enough oatmeal or raisins in it to make up for it.”

Shintaro squints at her, sneering slightly. “Jesus Christ, what are you, his mom? Just let the dude eat the dumb cookie.” He rolls his eyes at the way she turns as red as a tomato, and huffs. “Don’t worry. These cookies are as healthy as the biggest mother hen in the world could get them. Slpenda granular, orange juice, egg whites, nonfat dry milk, unsweetened applesauce, vanilla extract, salt, baking soda, ground cinnamon, allspice, whole wheat flour, old fashioned oats, and raisins. No saturated fat, no cholesterol, high in iron, high in manganese. The only bad thing is that it’s kind of high in sugar though.”

“Is that good enough for your precious son?” he asks mockingly, and he doesn’t bother to wait for her response. He turns back around and heads towards the back, walking into the kitchen. “Come on, tree boy. Let’s just hurry up and get those beans so you two can leave already.”

He can hear the two of them talk to each other, probably Takane trying to convince Haruka to leave or something, but he continues to make his way to the stove anyway. He takes out a saucepan and a stirring paddle to set it on the stove, and then pulls out the can of cocoa powder, the sugar, and the vanilla extract out from the cupboard near the fridge to set them on the counter.

He walks over to the sink to fetch the measuring cup and the measuring spoons from the drying rack, filling the measuring cup with water until it’s half full, then heads back to the stove to get ready to make the hot chocolate for Haruka.

He measures a teaspoon of sugar and a teaspoon of cocoa to add to the saucepan, before pouring the water in it and turning on the heat and starting to stir the ingredients gently, watching it slowly start to mix together and the liquid starting to steam gently.

By the time the mixture gains a syrupy appearance, Haruka finally steps into the kitchen, looking a little flustered and sniffing the air. “I’m sorry that I took so long to come in here! Takane was talking to me about some stuff, and ooh, it smells really good in here! And it looks so cool in here! It’s like a real kitchen!”

Shintaro shrugs, flicking off the switch to the stove and he ignores most of Haruka’s gushing about the place. He’s used to seeing the kitchen, so it’s not much of a sight to him. “It’s fine. I’m almost done with your drink anyway. Can you get the coffee beans? They should be in this cupboard.” He gestures to the cupboards right above the stove.

“Yeah, okay!” Haruka walks over towards the stove, still looking around the kitchen curiously. “That hot chocolate smells really, really good though! Takane told me to expect it to just be instant hot chocolate and that I’d have to stir it myself, but she was completely wrong! You’re amazing!”

Shintaro blinks a little at that, shifting uncomfortably. “It’s, it’s just hot chocolate,” he says, stepping to the side so Haruka can reach the cupboards. “It’s a really simple thing to make and it doesn’t take much time.”

“But still! It might be something that you think is easy, but it’s amazing to me because it smells delicious!” Haruka smiles at him. “Something that I’d make wouldn’t smell as good as this! You’re really amazing, you know! Plus, it was so, so cool how you knew my name and it was just mind-blowing how you listed everything that was in the cookies off the top of your head!”

“You really are amazing!” he insists, smiling so brightly at Shintaro that it almost hurts to look at him, and Shintaro has to look away because his cheeks are turning to heat up and turn as red as the dumb apron Ayano made for him, with his name stitched in on the breast pocket as close to pixel font she could get it. “Your name is Shintaro, right? That’s a nice name, a nice name for an amazing person!”

“Thanks… I guess, I’m, I’m not that great, okay,” he grumbles underneath his breath, and he starts thinking of everything he can think of, to calm himself down and get rid of the blush on his face. He resorts to trying to recite the first hundred numbers of π in the attempt to calm down, staring pointedly at the fridge.

“Ah, I think I found the beans!” Haruka suddenly pipes up, and Shintaro turns back to look up at him, moving things around in the cupboard. “They’re in the large, brown bag, right? Are they really heavy?”

Shintaro frowns. “I’ve never carried them myself, but Seto swings it around like it’s a bag of feathers and Kano doesn’t really have much trouble with it either,” he says. “I don’t think it’s all that heavy.”

“Okay!” Haruka hums excitedly. “If it’s not that heavy, then I should be able to carry it!” He wraps his arms around the bag and pulls it out of the cupboard. Then it falls on his chest and he lets out a small grunt, falling backwards.

Shintaro lets out a surprised shout and tries to grab him to help him regain his balance, but he ends up getting pulled down with him and they end up on top of each other, with Shintaro bumping his head into Haruka’s chest with the bag of coffee beans cradled between them and one of his legs resting in between Haruka’s legs.

“Ouch… I’m, I’m so sorry!” Haruka squeaks, reaching up and running his hands all over Shintaro’s face and forehead feeling for injuries. “A-are you okay? I’m really sorry! I didn’t expect the bag to be so heavy, and I ended up pulling you down with me!”

“It’s, it’s fine. I’m okay. Don’t worry about me,” Shintaro groans softly, slowly pushing himself up off of Haruka. “Are you okay though? The coffee bag’s pretty heavy, I guess, and I’m not so light either.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it!” Haruka laughs, rubbing at the small lump on Shintaro’s forehead. “I’m sturdy than I look! I just didn’t expect the bag to be so heavy so I was really surprised! Plus, the mat cushioned the fall a lot.”

“That’s… good,” Shintaro says slowly. If Haruka’s fine, then he can’t sue, right? Shintaro really doesn’t want to deal with upset customers and lawsuits if Ayano isn’t here with him. “I’m glad that you’re okay.”

Haruka smiles at him again, and is about to say something, but there’s suddenly the loud of footsteps and a loud, “Haruka! What happened, are you okay?!” and in comes Takane, looking worried and upset, before her eyes land on Shintaro and Haruka on the floor, staring at them for a few moments, with Haruka’s hands all over Shintaro’s face and Shintaro on top of him, and his knee dangerously close to a sensitive part of Haruka’ anatomy.

“Oh,” she says softly, still staring at them. “Oh.”

“Hello, Takane!” Haruka greets her cheerfully, as Shintaro sputters and immediately gets off of Haruka. “We just got the coffee bag down, so Shintaro can make you your coffee now! Isn’t that great?”

Takane just turns back around and starts running out the door without a single word. Fuck. Goddamn, shit. Shintaro groans and buries his face in his hands.

“Looks like something urgent came up for Takane then if she’s leaving without saying bye,” Haruka comments innocently. “She’s running away so fast! She really should have joined the track team when we were in school.”

Shintaro is almost speechless. “Do, do you honestly not understand why she ran away?” he asks, barely holding back a loud scream. “Like, honest to God have no idea.”

“No…?” Haruka replies quizzically, and Shintaro hears the sound of fabric shifting. Is he getting up? “Maybe Takane had to go back to her house because she forgot something! Or her grandmother called her!”

“No… No! That is the wrong answer!” Shintaro lets out a muffled scream into the flesh of his palm before dragging his hands down his face, letting out a strangled groan. He almost screams again, because Haruka is sitting right in front of his face. “God, fuck! Shit, damn! Why? Why are you sitting so close?! Goddamn it!”

Haruka pouts and scoots back a few centimeters. “Shintaro, how come you know the reason why Takane left? I’m her best friend and I’ve known her longer than you have! So why do you know? Come on, tell me!”

Shintaro just sighs and leans back, not caring when his head hits the metal of the stove. He prays for this girl, he really does. This guy’s oblivious as Hell. “The reason why your ‘best friend’,” he uses air quotation marks mockingly, rolling his eyes when it makes Haruka pout even more, “left because she saw us in a compromising position and assumed that we were doing inappropriate things. That’s it.”

Haruka’s pout turns into a frown. “That’s it? That’s why she left? That’s not much of a reason… She knows that I wouldn’t do something like that!”

Hearing him say that is actually pretty painful because Shintaro might actually, actually like this dude just a little for some odd reason, and he unintentionally takes in a sharp inhale of breath, which makes Haruka give him a confused look. “Yeah, yeah,” he grumbles, closing his eyes and counting to ten in his mind. “You’d never do anything like this. Just hurry up and go after her and tell her that, then tell her that you love her and want to date her, whatever. Go do whatever it is that straight couples do together. Get married, have two point five kids and a dog.”

His voice is overwhelming bitter by the end of that, and Shintaro grimaces. Ha, well. Whoops. Now the cute nice guy with the nice smile knows that he’s gay and will probably never come back. At least Shintaro will get to drink his hot chocolate when he leaves.

It’s quiet for a while, before Haruka gently grabs Shintaro’s face, cupping his cheeks, and making him slowly open his eyes to stare at him in confusion. Haruka just smiles at him, stroking his skin with his thumb. “What I meant, was that I wouldn’t make any type of advance on you unless I got to take you out on a few dates first.”

Shintaro continues to stare up at him. “A… few dates,” he echoes slowly, and Haruka nods. “You, you want to go out on a date, with me and not Takane. I, I don’t… understand.”

Haruka nods again excitedly. “Yeah, I really want to date you! I’ve wanted to go into the café for a while because I saw you at the counter a few times and I always thought you were really cute! Your friend, Ayano, saw me hanging around a few times while I was trying to see if you were there so she talked to me for a while and I told her about how I thought you were really cute, so she decided to help me out and told me that you’d be alone today!”

“Huh,” Shintaro says, squinting. “I. I see…”

“So, would you like to go out on a date with me? I-if not, then that’s okay!” Haruka laughs nervously and releases Shintaro’s cheeks. “I’ll respect your decision! I mean, you don’t even really know me and I’ve been hanging out for a while and that’s, that’s kind of creepy, and…”

Shintaro shrugs nonchalantly, staring up at the ceiling and pretending that his ears are red because goddamn it, it might be kind of creepy, he’s actually really flattered. “Yeah, sure, I guess. I guess I wouldn’t mind going on a date with you.”

Haruka lets out a loud, high pitched shriek that startles him, before wrapping his arms around Shintaro’s shoulders and bringing him in for a tight bear hug, shouting, “Oh! Thank you, thank you, thank you so much, Shintaro! It’s an honor to get to date you!” at the top of his lungs.

Shintaro just pats him on the shoulder. “Yeah, sure,” he says, trying not to cover his ears because it’s actually really nice how excited Haruka is to date him. “You’re welcome.”


End file.
